Archives for September 2015

Coffee producing countries are beginning to roast and serve craft coffee. We recently came across an exciting new roastery in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic that is introducing specialty coffee to the Caribbean nation. As we learned more we became intrigued by Coral and Edouard, the wife and husband team behindGente de la Isla. Naturally, we felt an interview was in order.

Tell us a little bit about Gente de la Isla. Who are you? What do you do?

Gente de la Isla is a specialty coffee roastery. We also bake our all natural granola and are currently working on developing other breakfast products. Everything is hand made by a small team of 4. We distribute our products via our online store and through 15 small resellers in Santo Domingo. We organize tastings and coffee tasting workshops.

We’ve been big fans of Collective Espresso since they opened their first location in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood almost three years ago. Since then we’ve seen them open what could be the perfect neighborhood coffee shop on the Northside of town. Their newest café in the heart of Downtown Cincinnati is their most refined and ambitious project yet….

I flew West recently with my family to catch a glimpse of what it would look like to transplant ourselves to San Francisco, and more specifically, what it would look like to be planted in the Sunset. Amidst our travels, we were fortunate enough to be staying nearby Andytown Coffee Roasters, a shop six blocks from the ocean, and 1 block from my heart.

Oceanside

The Outer sunset, with its walkable neighborhoods, ocean view, and Andytown Coffee, kindled an aroma reminiscent of all the things we love about the Midwest. Okay… so we don’t have an ocean view in Kentucky, but Andytown brought the same enchantment of a local roastery joined with a close community that we had experienced at Sunergos in our hometown. It’s the kind of place that you might meet a friend for coffee, or ask a girl to prom via some well placed latte art.…

If you’ve read anything about the city of Detroit in the last decade you probably know it fell on some pretty hard times. We’ll leave the commentary on the rise and fall of Detroit to economists and urban planners. We, on the other hand, are happy to report there are some pretty great places to get a cup of coffee in Motown. One of those places is Astro Coffee….

When choosing a filter, there’s always a sacrifice made. Paper filters provide the best clarity, but remove many of the oils. Metal or cloth filters improve the body, but leave sediment at the bottom of the cup. Here at the the Coffee Compass we’re unapologetically biased towards clean coffees, so we’ve always chosen paper as the lesser of two evils. But recently we encountered a type of filtration that seems to offer the best of both worlds: The Kyuemon Ceramic Filter. This porous, reusable filter comes with a white ceramic shell. Although it looks something like a spherical Hario V60, the resulting brew couldn’t be more different. …